David vs. Goliath Posted by Michael Cohen

Before the day escapes me I must take this opportunity to share with DA readers this nugget from Michael O'Hanlon's plea in today's Washington Post for more defense spending:

The administration is right to propose increasing resources for the State Department and aid programs. But it is unwise politics and unwise strategy to put these key elements of foreign policy in direct competition with each other, as appears to be the case in the new budget.

This has to be a joke. The budget for the Pentagon is approximately $650 billion. The budget for the State Department - around $54 billion. How under any measurement is that a competition?  This isn't a question of taking money from DoD and giving it to State; it's a question of giving to the State Department whatever is left over after the Pentagon takes every bite it wants out of the apple.

O'Hanlon, however, is concerned that the vast increases in the international affairs budget will do damage to the Pentagon, which under Obama's budget will be forced to subsist on a minimal spending increase:

The base budget (the part that does not include war costs, which are too unpredictable to include in this analysis) is to grow 2 percent a year over the next five years. But with the inflation rate expected to average over 1.5 percent, the net effect is essentially no real growth. Cumulatively, that would leave us about $150 billion short of actual funding requirements through 2014.

So if I understand this correctly O'Hanlon is saying that we must increase defense spending because if we don't then we'll have to cut defense programs . . . and the problem is? His is an argument in defense of military spending for the sake of military spending devoid of any strategic rationale for why this defense spending is even necessary. (Say that ten times fast).

Perhaps the better question for Michael O'Hanlon to have asked is whether there might be $150 billion in the defense budget worthy of being cut, as opposed to taking more money from civilian agencies, domestic spending priorities or borrowing it from overseas. It seems to me that after years of atrophy it is America's civilian agencies that need the most possible support not a bloated defense budget chock full of weapons systems intended to fight global rivals that no longer exist or are unlike to arise.

Here's one suggestion. Today there are plans to increase the Army and Marine Corps by 92,000 troops, which is estimated to cost $110 billion. Considering that we are drawing down troops in Iraq and the chances of a major conventional conflict on the horizon seem slim maybe we could make a cut there. It's not as if we don't have an armed forces that already dwarfs every other military in the world and then some.

Look, I don't mean to sound like some lefty agitator, but in an era of tightening budgets and economic downturn, maybe the time has come for the United States to recognize that our big military, which takes up more than half of the budget's discretionary spending, needs to have a moment of reckoning. Maybe the time has come for us to figure out how we can do more with less or maybe reduce our security commitments around the world so that we have enough money in the budget to provide Americans with health care or a strong social safety net or maintain a diplomatic and development agency with the capacity to further US interests. Maybe we should think about the amount of money we spend on defense in terms of what we actually want and need our military to do.

But of course I'm being silly; in America we make tradeoffs for every public institution except for the military.

Comments

[Greg Sanders]

Well put.

[Don Bacon]

Speaking as a lefty agitator, I agree with you. One problem we have is that Congress-critters love "defense" spending because much of it brings "free money" into their districts, whereas diplomacy spending would not.

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